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New Economy Roundup: John Oliver, Nazis, and Aboriginal Rights

This week we’re talking about John Oliver lifting up resident-owned communities as a solution to rent hikes, corporations reckoning with their Nazi-affiliated past, and how aboriginal people of Australia had their native title rights recognized. (Thanks CEANYC for the banner meme!)

Australian Indigenous Rights Win: The High Court of Australia has handed down the biggest "native title" ruling affecting Aboriginal ownership of the land in decades, amid claims that billions of dollars in compensation will need to be paid by governments to indigenous groups. Read what this means for native land and water rights.

Doing More (Happiness) With Less: Developed countries with much smaller per capita emissions than the United States are hardly dystopias. Happy countries’ investments in collective consumption and their shorter work weeks allow for a whole host of activities that make us happier — and happen to not destroy the planet. Read Kate Aronoff’s Hot Take on lessons we can learn from policies abroad.

Participatory Budgeting Project Tracker

The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), an NEC Member, has introduced a new online tool in celebration of the first 10 years of t​he organization. The online tool includes a map of PB across the U.S. and Canada to help us look back as we plan for the next 30+ years of PB. Each dot on the map represents a place where democracy has been deepened by bringing people together to decide together how to invest public resources in their community. The map is linked to the database that PBP maintains to try to track every PB process in the U.S. and Canada. For example, you can find out that in 2018 there were 56 PB city-wide, county-wide, and district-level processes in the US and Canada - Explore the map here!

Upcoming Events

A Webinar on State & Gender Violence in Black CommunitiesJoin NEC Member BYP100 for this virtual political education session on state and gender violence impacting Black communities as a part of the launch of their She Safe, We Safe campaign. BYP100 believes that by centering the experiences of violence that uniquely impact Black women, girls, femmes, and gender non conforming people, we will be able to build solutions, outside of police and prisons, that will keep all of us safe. (April 11 - Online Webinar)

Remaking the Economy: The Critical Role of AdvocacyThis webinar includes an interview with Esteban Kelly, executive director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and a panel with three expert speakers: Evette Roots, a social enterprise specialist at the Office of Community Wealth Building in Richmond, Virginia; Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, policy director at the Sustainable Economies Law Center in Oakland, California; and Anthony Flaccavento, a candidate for Congress in 2018 from Abbington, Virginia, and author of Building a Healthy Economy from the Ground Up. (April 11 - Online Webinar)

Boston: Launching the Green New Deal TourJoin the Tour Launch of the Road to a Green New Deal. Explore what the pain of the climate crisis looks like for Boston and the nation, and what the promise of the Green New Deal will look like, too. Hear from political champions, including Senator Markey and Representative Pressley, and community and movement leaders, including Reverend Mariama White Hammond and the students who led the Boston Youth Climate Strike. (April 17 - Boston, MA)

2020 Divestment Day National Escalation CallFossil Free Future and Divest Ed are hosting an open discussion call to talk about coordinated national escalation for National Divestment Day, February 13th, 2020 Join to learn how to get your campus involved, and how to get involved in planning the national escalation. (April 17 - Online)

Restore and Repair: A New Social Contract to Decolonize Our InstitutionsHow do we tackle the devastating harms of criminalization imposed on communities of color that continue, among other things, to prevent us from creating an inclusive democracy? The movement for restorative and transformative justice in schools offers a path forward. Parents and students have built an alternative framework to repair and restore relationships and decolonize how our institutions work. Please join this conversation with The New School on how we can move from social control and criminalization to inclusive democracy and liberation. (April 17 - New York, NY)

East Oakland Cooperative Book Club - Collective CourageIf you are an African American entrepreneur starting a business, an existing business owner thinking about succession plans and you have Black workers, or an existing worker coop with black worker-members looking for a refresher, this book club is for you! Organized by NEC Member, Sustainable Economies Law Center and their partners. (April 22 - Oakland, CA)

2nd MACED/Project Equity Eastern KY Worker Co-op TrainingMore than 26,000 Kentucky businesses, employing more than 300,000 people, are owned by baby boomers. Many have not identified the next generation of ownership and could be at risk of closing their businesses when they retire. One way to keep these businesses thriving and locally-owned is transitioning to a worker-owned cooperative or other form of employee ownership. Presented by Project Equity, these workshops explore worker-owned cooperatives and other employee-owned models, as well as best practices in helping businesses transition to employee ownership. (April 30 - Morehead, KY)

People of the Global Majority in the Outdoors, Nature and Environment ConferencePGM ONE convenes emerging and established professionals of color/the global majority who work in the environmental and outdoor movement to share, learn, collaborate, heal, celebrate, build community, find support, and sharpen their analysis of racial equity in their fields. PGM ONE is a project of NEC Member, Earth Island Institute. (May 8-10 - Philadelphia, PA)

2019 Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise Social enterprise is a growing movement in communities across Canada. For 10 years, the Social Enterprise Council of Canada has been bringing community developers, social entrepreneurs, and policy makers together to envision how these businesses can solve our biggest problems. Join NEC Member, the Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet)to learn together, celebrate incredible progress, and set the stage for the next decade of social impact. (May 8-10 - Quebec, Canada)

2019 Spring RootSkillsThe RootSkills series is about building networks and strengthening movements by making powerful, intersectional connections between a broad spectrum of participants all working towards a common goal. The workshop agenda and learning objectives are co-created by a planning committee. An open call for workshop sessions has resulted in offerings that are about helping grassroots organizers develop their own solutions to complex environmental and social justice issues that affect where they live. Workshop sessions are both process- and issue-based. This event will focus on racial and economic disparities to consider in/equity in rural, New England communities. (May 18 - Brattleboro, VT)

10-Year Anniversary Party for the Participatory Budgeting ProjectFor the past ten years, PBP has been the lead organization growing participatory budgeting across North America. They've launched and supported PB processes in over 30 cities, empowering 400,000 people to decide how to spend $300 million, funding more than 1,630 community-generated projects. To celebrate, they’re hosting a 10th Anniversary Benefit at Prime Produce in New York City. Come toast to the past 10 years, and many more ahead - reflect and share what we hope to accomplish moving forward. (May 23 - New York, NY)

5th Annual Conference of theCooperative Professionals GuildThe Cooperative Professionals Guild is a home for attorneys and accountants who specialize in cooperative business models. The Guild provides a forum in which its members advance their professional development and jointly promote a cooperative economic future for the United States. (May 30-June 1 - Chicago, IL)

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